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umdenken points out that the first batch of generic Top Level Domains will go live within the next several days, including .bike, .guru, .clothing, .holdings, .singles, .plumbing, and .ventures. (Early access began Jan. 29th.) ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade says there is currently huge demand for ICANN to reopen their program to let companies run their own gTLD. He said, "Many, many brands and many, many communities didn't know about the GTLD program. I get significant amounts of questions about when can we open the next round, because certainly there is a bit of angst that if Canon [who applied for the .canon gTLD] uses this to do an incredible mass customization campaign to win users to their product, I'm sure the brand next to them will say "Why aren't we doing this?" So I do believe this will snowball. But many will find a .com or whatever they have now will be good enough, and I believe that one excludes the other." He also said the $185,000 price tag to do so is likely to drop.

Now you can make your domain name look like a USENET discussion forum:

alt.fashion.goth.clothingcomp.languages.cobol.programmer.guru

alt.binaries.sex.pictures.erotica.bestiality.hamster.duct-tape - You can expect our A-1 tapes of sexy colors to take a beating and still provide you the protection required; be sure to catch our ads in the newspaper.

It would have been more honest to ban generic terms for TLDs (except the big five), and instead require the new TLDs to be the names or reasonable abbreviations of the controlling registrars. So instead of ".bike", they would have registered... wait they're called Donuts? Seriously? You gave a TLD to a company called Donuts? Sigh. Okay, bad example. But you get my point.

I think there is a lingering cringe against companies (*cough*Microsoft*cough*) having their own private TLD. But, in practice, that's all

Well, I could think of a few reasons why Apple should not have.apple. One of them being that there's allegedly a fruit by that name that even allegedly has older rights to that name.

But in general, what good would it serve? So FINALLY, after all those years, the internet community learned that their company can be found at "www.company.com". What would we gain by getting ".company" now instead? Aside of having to reteach everyone? There is exactly zero net value to the internet users.

What? Oh, we could be certain that.company is actually $company? We already can if $company gives a shit about its domain name. It's trivial for $company to win the rights to "www.company.com" from the average domain squatter. And if they don't give a fuck, well, then.company won't save you from a scammer either because guess what, they can register that themselves. It's fairly trivial to open up $company in some country the name of which ends in -stan and claim the TLD. If nobody challenges it, who would keep you from doing so?

So what exactly do you expect from.company? Personally, I see exactly zero benefit. Well, aside of the benefit for the ICANN because everyone HAS to buy his.company TLD lest some scammer does.

CUPERTINO, California and LONDON—Apple® Inc. and The Beatles’ company Apple Corps Ltd. are pleased to announce the parties have entered into a new agreement concerning the use of the name “Apple” and apple logos which replaces their 1991 Agreement. Under this new agreement, Apple Inc. will own all of the trademarks related to “Apple” and will license certain of those trademarks back to Apple Corps for t

It's clear that ICANN wants to create a bunch of privately owned TLD registrars. Good or bad, they have been pushing that barrow for several years now. But the current scheme hides those registrars behind idiotic faux-generic TLDs as if they were the original.com.net.org.edu.gov.mil. I'm just saying that it's more honest if you want to allow companies to buy private TLDs, then use their actual names.

ICANN has this cringe against letting companies use their names as TLDs, but want a bunch of registrars running private TLDs. It's self-contradictory and results in the current stupidity.

If nobody challenges it, who would keep you from doing so?

$185,000 non-refundable application fee plus $1 million per year. Plus whatever additional rules ICANN wants to attach. This isn't intended for the average company. If it went beyond, say, a hundred company TLDs, I'd raise the annual fee until the number drops below that. If it was below 25 coTLDs, I'd reduce the fee until it rises.

Let me put it another way: Why should the island of Tuvalu be allowed to have a TLD, (actually leased to and run out of a ISP in Canada IIRC), but not Google? (Or rather why should a small ISP in Canada have the entirely for-profit.tv TLD, when Google/Apple/Microsoft/Yahoo/ATT/Amazon/etc can't?)

Or for that matter, why should Nauru, population 9000, but not California, population 38 million?

ICANN will have every company out there, buying and squatting on.company, and then a few million speculators and more squatters hoping to mind gold by having.spoon, and.gold, and.shovel -- every single word in the dictionary will have to be bought from iCANN.

Then of course Coke will have to register coke.coke, and IBM ibm.ibm -- just because.

There's ZERO use to the world for this confusion, but when has that stopped anything when profits are on the line?

Can anyone give a few points on how this is good for the general internet user?

The presence of a custom TLD on a website is an instant indicator for me that the website is almost certainly a flash in the pan marketing project, not being taken very seriously by its owners, and probably not worth my time to click on the link.

It is getting to the point where domain names themselves are useless; you basically need a search engine for everything. Maybe we should just switch to IPV6 addresses instead; it will make things easier...

No, it's bad for businesses. It means they have to invest funds in protecting their brand. Just like how the.xxx domain people blanketed television with ads, saying how they'll extort your non-porn business by registering your name under their TLD.

Did you look at the list? The first one is in Arabic: (Just a redirect.) [www.xn--ngbc5azd], http:/// [http]./ probably won't work on Slashdot, so try http://xn--ggbla1c4e.xn--ngbc5... [xn--ggbla1...--ngbc5azd] instead..VERSICHERUNG is for the "German speaking insurance industry",.BERLIN is obvious, and there's a few in Russian, Chinese and Japanese.

Intern... I18n is the process of making an application aware of different ways to display text (such as LTR vs. RTL), different number formats, different currency formats, etc. Since usually applications are designed for the formats used in the developers' culture, adding other cultures to an application means opening it up to other nations, thus the application becomes international. You are probably thinking of localization (l10n), which is the process of taking an internationalized application, and makin

why do we even have.com or.org or.net on the end. Surely the classification of organization at a address can be stored in some other way, and not be so important as to need to be typed in every time you go to that url. I mean, why cant i just type 'slashdot' in the address bar. Damn near everyone defaults to.com anyway.

To identify which registration authority the domain name was created under.

Also... to distinguish domain names from just any other name.

I'll give you an example: "BOOKS"

No one entity should get a monopoly on the name BOOKS.
If you type BOOKS into your browser address bar; you should not be summarily redirected to whoever happened to get there first ---- logically, you would be presented search results based on relevance.

The authority system allows, there to be a BOOKS.COM under the Commercial registration authority... that might be a book store, Or an accounting vendor....

There can be a BOOKS.ORG, under the non-profit organization reg. authority ---- that might, for example, be a library-related organization.

Then there can be a BOOKS.EDU under the education reg. authority --- that domain might, for example, be an institution of higher learning that specializes in the library sciences or authorship/book writing.

Such domains a.INFO; were added later, and Don't really fit logically in the original DNS system.

If all TLDs were random six letter combinations, or local geographic regions, I'd see your point, but with the TLDs we have now, using your logic, ONE books.edu for all institutions of higher learning in the world is about as dumb as one books.

Either make a lot more of them, or get rid of them... doing nothing isn't solving your problem.

More like if you had anything of the slightest value under a non-".com" domain the equivalent ".com" domain will be registered for ad squatting and/or to get a payout from you. They're not meaningful either, last I checked slashdot for example is not a non-profit, it's owned by a quite regular for-profit holding company so why is is NOT slashdot.com? And I never know what ".net" was supposed to be, I mean I can't even tell without looking up some sort of definition and even that one is vague as fsck "organi

Why go for the example 'books'. Why not other common names like 'windows' or 'apple'.

I still ask why there were.com,.net and.org. I will elaborate a bit more. Why aere ther.com,.net and.org next to the country codes?

It would have been better (hindsight is always 20/20) to just have gone with the country codes. That way each country would have been able to do whatever they please to do. Do you want to give nobody a domain? Good for you. Do you want to limit id to just your citizens or just businesses or to everybody who pays you? Great.

The argument against this is often what about things like linux.org or similar things. When I look at the whois data, I see a US addrss, so it would have been linux.us or even linux.org.us or linux.inc.us or whatever they want to come up with.

And while I am at it, the order of the domain should have been reversed. So instead of e.g. tech.slashdot.org.us, It would have been better to go for us.org.slashdot.tech as you then follow the tree. Even neater if there would have been no dots, but slashes instead:http://us/org/slashdot/tech//directory/subdirectory/file.html (Please note the second double slashes to show where the domain ends and the file system begins.

Anyway, we can contemplate on what could have been, but now we have this mess and it will have to do.

And while I am at it, the order of the domain should have been reversed. So instead of e.g. tech.slashdot.org.us, It would have been better to go for us.org.slashdot.tech as you then follow the tree. Even neater if there would have been no dots, but slashes instead:http://us/org/slashdot/tech//d... [us] (Please note the second double slashes to show where the domain ends and the file system begins.

Actually in the 80s that is pretty much how it was.

UUCP mail was routed from one mail server to another to another before finally (hopefully!) landing in a users mail spool on a server they frequently checked more than others. This one done with whats called "bang paths" as they used ! as the separator, and the route was listed left to right ending with a double colon and the username.

Even at the time DNS replaced hosts.txt on the ARPAnet, there were still other connected networks like BITnet and CSnet using different protocols that used mixed forms of routing paths, and neither network required NSF approval to join like the ARPAnet did.BITnet was IBMs VMS network, and anyone that had a VAX with the RSCS software installed and could afford a leased line was able to get on the network and get data to/from the arpanet.There was a serious perceived threat from these other protocols, most of which lacked a unified or centrally managed naming lookup scheme (although that is exactly what RSCS was, although only for VAX)

At the time each protocol pretty much only looked out for their own, except for DNS which was advertized as "generic" and "non-proprietary" as only IP was required. DNS was also an open standard like IP and TCP. That was enough for DNS to "win" and become the one true naming system.

I'm not sure why they decided to use a right to left hierarchy beyond just trying to differentiate themselves from existing protocols...But it doesn't follow the URL/URI standard because that wasn't to be invented for another 10 years or so.As you say, hindsight is always 20/20

According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], Tim Berners Lee mostly agrees with you on the URL format. From the Wikipedia page:

Berners-Lee later regretted the use of dots to separate the parts of the domain name within URIs, wishing he had used slashes throughout. For example, http://www.example.com/path/to/name would have been written http:com/example/www/path/to/name. Berners-Lee has also said that, given the colon following the URI scheme, the two slashes before the domain name were also unnecessary.

The way I see it,.com is the generic domain. It's not that hard to append it to everything. The only useful other domains are.edu and.gov. The national domains are somewhat useful because they let you know it's a local site, although I don't understand why they need it, really, they should just use.com also.

In the early day of internet research, they wanted to distinguish between corporations there to make a profit, non-profit organisations, educational groups and the military. So they had ".com" = corporations/companies, ".org" = non-profit organisation, and ".edu" for the educational research groups, ".mil" for the military", and ".net" for the companies that managed the continent wide networks built from fibre-optics and satellite communications.

So they had ".com" = corporations/companies, ".org" = non-profit organisation, and ".edu" for the educational research groups, ".mil" for the military", and ".net" for the companies that managed the continent wide networks built from fibre-optics and satellite communications.

.com is derived from the word "commerical" [ietf.org] which includes but is not limited to corporations and companies.

Back in 1985 when.net was created I don't think there was "continent wide networks built from fibre-optics"..net was intended for network technology companies, ISPs (local, national and international) and infrastructure companies. Although, no restrictions were put on it's use so it has become a general purpose name.

Domain peddlers are going bonkers now, I tried to get my name as a.guru, but it ended up costing a small fortune...so I steered away. At first...40 bucks seems nice for a 1 year.guru name, but then there are "early registration fees" so called landrush fees that can cost several thousand dollars, and they even have hefty admin fees that costs several hundred dollars...stay away from the scammers, and they're plentiful right now.

how about we just drop the farse that are TLDs? the only TLDs with any credability are.gov and.edu because those are regulated. all the other TLDs are just one big bag of everything else. nobody wants to get a.net if.com is taken because of the confusion that ensues.

Here in Australia, we have regulations (socialism!) that require anyone registering a.com.au domain to have some connection to the name in their registered business eg if I want to register bike.com.au, my business needs to have demonstrable connection to the bike business somehow. Sure some trash slips through the cracks, but on the whole works well to keep.com.au domains relatively reliable.
Not sure why more registrars don't enforce similar requirements.

A few years ago a bunch of people from Sweden announced they would create a distributed, non-trackeable DNS system. What happened to that?

The problem of fraudulent servers being introduced becomes significant. An authoritative hierarchical system means there's one and only one place to go to start looking up a new domain: the root servers. Distributed systems have no such authoritative root, so the process of figuring out what the real address is in such a system is complex. Complex enough that nobody has really finished the job, though there are detailed research papers and some fairly good proposals.

Meh. It's not like most people pay attention to the domains. They just go to their search engine of choice and type-in "Canon" (or whatever they happen to be looking for) and if they can be bothered they look for the most useful result or just click on the first one if they can't.

Yeah, I know they tried raping it before, but the world largely ignored.biz,.info,.aero and I even forgot what the others were. Or have you seen more than two domains in those TLDs in the recent years?

But brands, that was a gold mine. Advertisers are parasites and they will be happy to convince their marks^H^H^Hcustomers that they really, absolutely must have a fitting TLD now. And since in large corporations (that have the money), the people they talk to are also marketing dudes, it'll work.

It's a huge scam, but it'll rape the usefulness of the DNS hierarchy. Too bad we didn't put everyone within ICANN to the sword while there was still time.

The domain extension was originally created for non-profits, but this designation no longer exists and today it is commonly used by schools, open-source projects, and communities as well as by for-profit entities. - wiki

The domain name system hasn't really been meaningful in terms of descriptive for a very long time now. The only 'meaning' there was, for a long time, was that if you didn't have a.com domain, you might

Even now, if you have a domain name that's perfectly descriptive - say you're a business in Zambia - you're going to have more initial success with tompopcorn.com than you would with tompopcorn.co.zm , as people don't recognize '.zm'. See other comments about people ignoring the new TLDs the same way they would ignore a.cx domain (granted, part of that might be experience with some of the shadier sites that tend to choose.cx,.tk, etc.).

I don't know much about Zambia, but I'm sure Zambians recognise.zm. Only having a CCTLD is no barrier in most countries, or their neighbouring countries, which is what most businesses focus on. Search for.CX websites and there are plenty based on Christmas Island.

If I've forgotten the domain, I often guess.uk (.co.uk,.org.uk) as it's more likely to take me straight to the British website of a multinational, and less likely to take me to an identically-named company elsewhere in the Anglosphere.

There are hardly any computers at all on Christmas Island. There are only a couple of thousand people living there, most of whom are prisoners and workers in the detention centre.It's an interesting place but the domain was nothing but a cash grab for an Australian government owned business selling domains for porn sites at the same time they were running an anti-porn campaign to get rid of anything porn related under ".au".

However it's a safe bet that there are more domains registered there than the total population (which turns out to be about double what I mentioned above - a lot of prisoners there at the moment). So while there may be a couple of dozen sites actually related to the place it's a bit of a drop in the bucket.

Excluding all ccTLDs, the original gTLDs are:.arpa.com.net.org.gov.edu.mil and.intThe first expansion added:.aero.asia.biz.cat.coop.info.jobs.me.mobi.museum.name.pro.tel and.travel.

Then ICANN opened this new gTLD program. The listing of new gTLDs approved are here [icann.org]

I had the idea to use it for pre-blacklisting each and every one in my mail and web filters, but opted instead to go with a whitelisting approach hoping for easier maintenance (Thus the easy copy/pasting of the list at the to

Many organizations will be caught off guard by this and have their names grabbed under the new TLDs. On the bright side, this will temporarily give us a chance to grab decent names instead of paying a squatter. It also drops the value of their holdings.

Aside from that, looking at the list, I think some of these should have also had abbreviations..software,.engineer and.attorney look nice, but I would immediately want a shortened version as well.

As everyone knows, there was and is no actual need for these TLDs. Just like there was
no need for.xxx. Just like there was no need for.mobi. Just like there was no need for.info.
The entire process is driven NOT by the communal needs of the Internet, but by ICANN,
which is now completely controlled by registrars -- registrars who are always looking for
new/expanded revenue streams.

There WAS a time, as I'm sure some folks will remember, that "one entity-one domain"
was the rule. That time is long gone, as it drastically restricts registrar profits. Now?
It's not uncommon for single entities to control hundreds to hundreds of thousands of
domains. I've been researching this issue, and have looked at about 60M domains
so far: EASILY 90% of them are crap. They're owned by speculators, typosquatters,
"landing page" operators, clickthrough scammers, and on and on and on. I suspect
that as I expand my work, that percentage won't change much. In other words: we could
delete 90% of the domains out there with no appreciable effect on the Internet.

This latest expansion is merely an attempt to continue the same game -- but with
outrageously prices and profits.

Here is my recommendation: learn how to use DNS RPZ. As each one of these
TLDs is introduced, add it to the list so that you effectively make it disappear from
your view of the Internet. Encourage others to do the same. After all, you aren't
required to resolve any domain or group of domains -- so don't. If enough
of us do this, we will make these domains essentially worthless. (Why? Because
without DNS resolution in place, end users won't be able to reach them with web
browsers. MTAs that check for domain existence -- which they should -- will reject
all mail to/from them. And so on.)

The Internet doesn't need this junk. YOU don't need this junk. So make it vanish.

It will. The business approach is obvious: First you set the price ridiculously high, to extract as much money as possible from those who must have their domain at any cost - businesses with trademarks to protect, mostly. But there are only so many of those, so once sales dry up you gradually lower the price to broaden the market. That way everyone pays exactly as much as they can be made to pay, maximising revenue.

If you think that's bad, take a look at this article [newschoolbeer.com], and especially the picture therein (though the article is funny as well if you ask me). No, that's not photoshopped, that's the actual city limits sign of the town.

The additional sign says "Please! Not so fast!", and is a sign put up at many city limits signs, supposed to convince drivers to slow down, but in this context it's just... erh... wrong.

The root of the DNS zone is still handled by the US government. ICANN has a consultative role and suggests modifications, US can still veto any suggestion and can nuke a whole country out of DNS if they so chose.

"Inventing the Internet" gives you the same rights over the international Internet as "inventing the English language" gives over English speakers. If not for the DoD project, the computers of the world would have been connected using a descendant of Minitel, BBSes etc. It would have been completely different at the protocol level and completely similar at it's uses and porn availability.